Chicago Weekend Fun!

Looptopia is a Chicago festival that celebrates the Loop area (inside the L tracks loop) downtown. Looptopia is a night time festival with arts performances, exhibitions, music, food comedy and many other cool entertainment to take in that evening. It is meant to help celebrate the rebirth and renewal of the Loop area of Chicago in 2008 since many businesses have returned to the area recently and many condo and apartment buildings have returned to the area making living and playing in the Loop possible again after about 20 years of neglect, crime and poverty.  Looptopia usually starts at dusk and goes until dawn. They schedule performances and exhibitions and music events all night long and they are all free to attend and see.

I attended the event last year (see picture above from 2007) and took some photos but it was very crowded with a lot of teenagers and college kids and it was very difficult to walk around and get anywhere. It was even more impossible to see any of the exhibits, shows or theater that they had put together for the event because of the immense crowds that were much larger than the spaces that they had available. I tried to go to the Chicago Cultural Center to see TJ and Dave perform their amazing Improv show and I couldn’t even walk up the stairs because of the packed people standing there not being able to get through. So, after pushing my way around in the crowds for a while, I just left. I walked around the block and saw hundreds of kids blocking intersections and loitering around everywhere. There were some cops but not many. Everyone was orderly but it was difficult because people came to see the events and no one could find them (no map with schedule on it) and no one could actually get anywhere. Many people resorted to walking in the street to get home or to the bus or train they needed, and just gave up frustrated.

The Looptopia web site says the following summary about the festival: 15 Hours; 100 Venues, 300+ Artists, 200,000 attendees = Looptopia May 2, 2008.  What they left out is massive crowds and no parking.

I hope this year they provide better maps and schedules and allow for more people to access the events. It was difficult to enjoy the Loop last year during Looptopia under those circumstances. I think Chicago has a lot to offer in the arts and this should be a great festival to showcase that. They just need some better resource planning and organization to manage it. And some older viewers might help too, but all night parties don’t really always appeal to over 40 people. Check back in a few weeks and I will try and post more about this year’s 2008 lineup of performances and schedule.

The official PDF looptopia map can be downloaded here and the full event and performer schedule is available on looptopia.com. If you go, plan out your evening first since wandering into random events won’t be possible. They will have too many people there and no space to get around. It will take a lot of work to actually get to what you want to see and plan on getting there early.